Female character Elise revealed for Assassin’s Creed Unity

Ubisoft has announced a major new female character for Assassin’s Creed, but there’s no sign they’ve given into Internet pressure yet.

Despite offering four-player co-op this year’s Assassin’s Creed only has one named character: male assassin Arno Dorian. That’s despite previous games in the series having multiple playable female characters and computer-controlled allies.

As a result Ubisoft has found itself dragged into a controversy over sexism in video games and the portrayal of women. But whether this new announcement is mean to placate fans or not we’re not sure, because there’s no mention of ‘Elise’ being part of the multiplayer.

Instead the press release describes her as, ‘a character central to Assassin’s Creed Unity’s story’ and ‘an independent young noblewoman’.

‘Elise is determined to secure her place in the Templar dynasty amidst the chaos of the French Revolution. Her quest leads her to cross paths with Arno and establish an unlikely bond with him’, adds the blurb.

Her character certainly seems to have been planned a long time in advance as she’s getting her own book by regular Assassin’s Creed novelist Oliver Bowden.

And on top of that you can now pre-order ‘a high quality figurine’ of ‘Elise: The Fiery Templar’, which can be combined into a single diorama with the Arno: The Fearless Assassin figurine.

Quite why anyone would want to pre-order a statute of character they know nothing about, in a video game they have no idea whether they’ll like or not, we have no idea – but we long ago ago gave up trying to make sense of such things.